The White Witch's Book of Healing: Weaving Magickal Rituals throughout your Craft for Sacred Healing and Reclamation of the Wild Witch Within

By Carly Rose

Carly Rose shines a light on navigating the dark night of the soul, deconstructs shadow work, soul loss and soul revival, inner child work and reparenting yourself, shamanic journeying and deciphers working with deities and ancestors within your practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: That Guys House
• Release date: Nov 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781914447273

Book preview

Introduction

I class myself as a green and sea witch. I live in a Victorian flat with my beautiful daughter Amelie, Bowie our French bulldog and Tarot our tiny black cat. We have a home full of second hand French style furniture I have rescued and painted white, a small courtyard garden packed full of herbs and plants and the sea is at the end of our road. I have a healthy addiction to books, plants, tattoos, candles and of course witchcraft.

Witchcraft has always felt like coming home, it has gifted me a sense of belonging through working with nature and my deities, distracted my monkey mind in the early stages of addiction recovery with creating spells, getting out into nature to find items for my altar, logging my dreams in my dream book, using my money for books, candles and crystals instead of bottles of prosecco and enabled me to meet my witchy sisters within the witchcraft community.

Witchcraft had me stepping out of my comfort zone releasing a podcast purely on a whim only to have thousands of people subsequently listen to the show, many listeners contact me to say they too have struggled with issues of healing be it from drug or alcohol addiction, trauma, breakups, codependency or low self-worth. I was often asked for books I could recommend that would help them but I too had struggled to find books within the craft that could weave everything together that I felt I needed when I embarked on my healing journey.

I could never have envisaged this book would come to life, I also didn’t imagine I would have a podcast that people around the world would listen to.

I felt pretty lost for most of my younger days, highly sensitive, I often transmuted my confused overwhelming emotions into anger that led to depression. I didn’t know where my place in the world was and this led to a frustrating number of years where I put myself into the worst situations ever, shoplifting to orders whilst at secondary school, smoking marijuana we would steal from my friends dad on the walk to school, starting on cocaine at fifteen and a crack cocaine addiction by the age of twenty-one.

I viewed myself as a bad person at that time so I opted to stick with the people aboard that same boat. I knew there was a good person in me somewhere but she felt too inadequate and lowly around the bright light people doing positive things. She also felt overwhelmed with how much work she would have to do to heal so she wouldn’t even attempt to get started.

My parents went through absolute hell with me but they never gave up. When I was on the brink of trying to buy heroin it was my dad I called to come clean and ultimately get clean. They never turned me away no matter how dark things got.

At the age of thirty five following many on and off attempts to seek mental health support with limited success I was diagnosed with emotional intensity disorder. This is a condition where you have heightened emotional sensitivity and intense reactions, it can affect your relationships, work, physical health and self- esteem and it is common for people with EID to look for coping mechanisms such as self-harm, substance abuse, impulsively spending money, binge eating, engaging in risky sex which all of course add to further problems.

These risky behaviors can help you feel better in the moment but cause no end of chaos and hurt to you and those around you in the long term. People with EID tend to experience unstable emotions and moods at such intensity along with chronic feelings of emptiness. I discovered that it can be common for EID suffererers to contemplate or even attempt suicide, around eighty percent of those with EID attempt suicide and deaths from suicide range between eight to ten percent.

Having this condition confirmed was life changing for me, I could finally start to understand my behaviour across my lifetime. The best support I received in the form of mental health came from counselling sessions with Sue, the first time I persisted with counselling and we have had sessions on and off for the last five years. I can never express how grateful I am to Sue, that one hour every fortnight was crucial and transformational. This book consists of all the work I did in between those sessions that intertwined with my craft.

On my mental health team I also had Lynda, my wonderful herbalist and true witch in every sense. In my darkest days I would attend consultations with her, sitting sobbing at the table in her apothecary that was adorned with a multitude of glass bottles of potions containing every herb you can possibly imagine lined up behind me on the wall. I was sceptical at first about what a herbalist could do to heal but my reasoning then was if marijuana and cocaine could create such effects then who was I to belittle herbal medicine?.

I explained to Lynda through floods of tears how broken I felt whilst she concocted a medicine that included wood betony, liquorice and lavender amongst other ingredients that seriously levelled me out. She will never know how grateful I was for those sessions in my early healing and how she got me on track.

After years of never being able to successfully take antidepressants or any tablets prescribed for mental health due to feeling progressively worse I had finally found a natural means of boosting my mood, giving me a foundation to start the work on my mind. None of this was a rosy period, we are talking a real dark night of the soul combined with the responsibility of being a single parent to my daughter, a full time career as a recruiter with some big targets, financial issues and a serious alcohol dependency.

For the majority of my life I just wanted my emotions to actually work for me, not against me. I turned to numbing out in a bid to not experience these feelings as I believe many of us do. Sitting in AA meeting rooms on and off for a couple of years I realised that most addicts and people with seriously intense healing to do often have such amazing and wild minds, many I have met are serious creatives but struggling with the emotional intensity of life.

In a nutshell I know what it’s like to heal from addiction, low self-worth, suicidal thoughts and the belief you have nothing to offer this world. I have laid on the floor in the fetal position sobbing like an injured animal praying for everything to finish or cried guttural cries in the bathtub thinking life held nothing.

But I have also felt high on life being out in a golden corn field with my daughter at the height of summer. I have cried reading the most beautiful of books that spoke to my soul and also sitting at peace with myself in daily meditation and conversation with my deities. I have also felt pretty bloody amazing eating chips on the seafront with my best friend. The point is I have experienced the very depths of the darkness and realise that without those you cannot experience the highest of highs.

This book is for you my love, the one who feels that they will never ever be able to heal that particular hurt be it cast on you through addiction, trauma, toxic relationships or a lack of love for your beautiful soul. I know alone this book will not heal all your wounds however I hope it will provide comfort and solace and a way to weave your healing process into your craft.

This is an account of my own practices tackling my own drug and alcohol addiction, toxic relationships, codependency, suicidal thoughts and mental health issues. I am also aware my journey will always be ongoing and in no way straightforward or linear.

I recommend you start honouring your healing process by treating yourself to a beautiful notebook that you can use as a journal or book of shadows to document many of the rituals and your own personal findings as you work through this book.

I ask that whilst working through this book above all you treat yourself with the kindness and patience you so deserve and know I am sending you all the witchy love I can as we embark on this journey.

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‘Rough places show you what you're made of, child…….. Rough places ask you who you wish to become, stripped raw and bare. Rough places force you to come to grips with what you truly want in your most trying moments. Do you believe me?’

Danielle Dulsky - Seasons of Moon and Flame

1

The Worst Witch

You might have come across this book as a result of listening to my podcast. I am the host of The White Witch Podcast which first aired at Samhain 2019 and this is when the real magick began in my life.

I hope that by reading this book you can bring out the magick in your life too! My intention with the pages within this book is to conjure up and bring inspiration and healing to your craft. I have elaborated on some of the content I covered on my podcast but also thrown into the cauldron many additional practices that have helped me on my own crooked path.

Without sounding too dramatic, but failing miserably, witchcraft changed my life beyond comparison. I started out as that little girl who never desired to be a princess, I only ever wanted to be a witch. That was the dream!

Watching The Worst Witch film that starred Tim Curry and Fairuza Balk back in the eighties had me fantasising about attending witch school long before Harry Potter came on the scene. Combine that with being packed off for long hot summers staying in Bodmin, Cornwall where my grandparents lived, they would tell us the historical lore of the local witch trees, stone circles, druids, folk magick and took us on trips to the Boscastle Witch Museum, all of these experiences strengthened my curiosity and thirst for the craft.

As a teen in the nineties I was obsessed with witchy themed films such as Hocus Pocus, The Craft and Practical Magic. I always had an affinity for the mystical, anything witchy would sing to my soul and have me feeling aligned. The fixation continued yet in late teen years rapidly began to be replaced with a penchant for cheap alcohol, clubbing and badly behaved boys.

My childhood was pretty idyllic but as soon as puberty hit I was desperately insecure and unhappy within myself, a destructive angry whirlwind trying to seek some form of happiness mainly through hedonism. Witchcraft was abandoned temporarily aside from me picking up the odd Silver RavenWolf book now and again or re-watching one of my favourite witchy films.

During my early twenties I demonstrated hugely self sabotaging destructive behaviour, my first serious relationship was with an alcoholic. I didn’t realise my boyfriend was addicted to alcohol until we moved in together, his addiction began as a result of being left for dead for a number of hours in an alley following a hit and run accident. His addiction increased till he eventually upped the ante and added crack cocaine to his battalion of vices. I was so naive at this point I didn’t even know what crack cocaine was, had never even heard of it let alone comprehended how addictive it was. I succumbed to trying it one day after having a few drinks, my boyfriend resisted allowing me to try it at first, fast forward three weeks and I was addicted, desperate for my next hit. Crack had me in its claw-like grip.

I was a high functioning addict in that I could get up on time for work (sometimes I hadn’t even slept following a session taking crack cocaine), take a shower, put on my makeup and jump on the train to London to be at work for half eight. I had to keep my job to finance my drug habit yet at this point I hadn’t grasped how much this demon-like drug had taken over my life. I remember my best friend from school Francesca finding out about me using, she kindly attempted to intervene with her best intentions, dragging me along to a counselling session for addiction. On another occasion she turned up at my house for an evening out we had arranged, I asked my boyfriend to pretend I was out whilst I hid upstairs high as a kite, so high I couldn’t even face her but selfishly I wanted to carry on with the crack cocaine session I had already started.

The next day I woke up with soul destroying feelings of guilt combined with a comedown and sent her a huge bouquet of flowers to apologise, gradually and understandably I lost that friendship along with any feelings of respect from my faithful friend and deservedly so.

Life went on for a while like this, just working and taking drugs. There were nights me and my partner would get high and end up having a punch up, I remember smashing his head against a bannister repeatedly in defence for him attacking me first, I recall feeling so disgusted thinking this is so messed up, I love this person and we are killing each other. Another time he had to drag me to A and E following me slashing my wrists, I was full of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol and had no idea what I was doing or why. I remember walking through A and E with blood all over me, bandages on my wrist as I met the look of disgust at the state I was in from a woman within the hospital waiting room.

Me and my boyfriend reached a point where we no longer felt enough of a hit from crack, it began to feel like decaf. We had started to increase our usage for a better high and then we began to discuss trying to score heroin.

I honestly believe something, someone or perhaps just my intuition knew that if we reached that point one of us would die. I truly believe this is what led me to call my dad from a payphone at my local train station in London at five in the morning following an intense drug session. I realised I couldn’t do this anymore and would rather break my parents heart by explaining I was an addict then keep travelling down this road and have them identify my body at the morgue. I wanted to get clean.

I moved from the concrete jungle of south London to my parents’ new home they had recently moved to in the depths of the countryside in East Sussex, no dealers anywhere that I knew and could get to, It was a mile walk to civilisation. My parents confiscated my bank cards and took the total reign of my life in a bid to help get me clean. I kept my job in London but on a few occasions I would go off track and go missing following on from work if I managed to get money out of the bank via forms of ID I had or through borrowing money from friends. I would run back to visit my old boyfriend, not to see him so much but so we could take crack cocaine together.

This went on for a little while until it started to dawn on me, I was beginning to like my new life without the drugs and the boyfriend. I really wanted to knock it on the head once and for all, this was further solidified following someone we knew who died within his early thirties as a result of using crack cocaine.

I stopped using crack but some of this was helped by upping my alcohol intake, in effect I swapped out one addiction for another. I didn’t drink everyday, however I embarked on binge sessions with the goal of reaching the blackout unconscious stage, it was all or nothing from the first drink to black out.

I yearned to feel nothing, I was overwhelmingly sensitive to everything, peoples comments and behaviours, my own issues around my appearance and who I was overall, just never feeling enough. Alcohol and drugs helped in the moment with anxiety and provided false confidence when I needed it most. Alcohol and drugs are of course both depressants so the side effects I experienced often were increased anxiety and depression following a binge drinking session yet I couldn’t correlate the two, therefore the cycle continued. I couldn’t fathom a time where I would no longer rely entirely on some sort of vice.

A marker on my life that heralded a small return to myself and the craft came when I met Jackie through my work within a private healthcare company, insanely spiritual and witchy and a fellow Leo, she gifted me my first set of Tarot cards and a copy of one of my favourite books ‘Women who Run with the Wolves’ by Clarissa Pinkola Estes for my 21 st birthday.

Meeting Jackie and the influences she brought to my